


Public Relations: Yearning To Breathe Free

by sevenall



Series: PANTHEON: Public Relations [12]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alicia's Pantheon universe, Will Braddock Worthington grows up during the new world order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:59:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6622471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenall/pseuds/sevenall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherever Will Braddock Worthington goes, there he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Public Relations: Yearning To Breathe Free

It's one of those days when Will can't get his head together. Only dumb luck that the assignment isn't realtime, that there isn't a person on the other end waiting for the fix, because he has no idea how to do it. He doesn't know where to start, he doesn't see how there could be a solution to this problem and he thinks that maybe he won't be able to hack it at the Academy. After all he has put himself and other through, it seems such a waste to wash out of here.

He stares at the text some more. There is nothing wrong with his reading comprehension. which makes it quite singular at this point; everything else is completely out of place. Panic squeezes like a fist in his chest and he pushes the feeling down down before anyone else notices. Don't broadcast, Will, his mother has always said, don't distress your friends. Or: you're bleeding. Stop it, right this moment.

His mother is famous for many things, many of them less than complimentary, but at the Academy, she is respected for her control. She is the last of a generation who was broken in rather than educated and for all her lessons, Will feels that he has somehow failed to grasp the basics principles. He can't strip emotional gears the way she can, indeed, the way almost everyone else seems to able to, and while he can hyperfocus, he can't do it along the same synapse tracks, not as fast and not as well.

Kazakova and Harry sit at opposite ends of the room, supervising and scanning the ambience. Will pretends to write something on his pad, a flow chart with random symbols and connections. The multichannel test had both of them tiptoeing around him and David for weeks, which made all four of them edgy and created a four-way matrix of frustration. He is reluctant to draw any more attention, but the fist is squeezing harder and he feels his breath starting to come short.

This isn't supposed to happen during the day, in class, he thinks, but control slides a little more and he is forced to realise that yes, it is happening and he can't do a thing about it. Cold sweat breaks out on his forehead and his hands start feeling numb. The pencil falls out of his slack fingers, rolls over the edge of the desk and falls to the floor. This has got to shade the ambience, he thinks and tries to rouse himself. The assignment is a loss, but he'll walk out of here with some dignity intact.

"Excuse me," he says, forcing sound out of his throat somehow, and he is out of there, walking as fast as he can.

Blood pressure is dropping and the hallway writhes in his vision as he makes it to the restrooms. Once there, he has to lie down on the floor, which is disgusting, but it's that or faint. After a few minutes, he is able to get up without graying out. He turns on the cold water tap to rinse out his mouth and splash some water on his face. Then he looks up and sees his father in the mirror.

The palette is a darker one with jet, chestnut and olive whereas his father was blond and blue-eyed, but the features are identical. Even the sneer is in place, the slight curl of the upper lip marring what he has always thought of as a friendly expression; it feels friendly from the inside.

Fuck, he thinks and his knees wobble so he has to grab the edges of the sink. This is what they see when they look at him. Spoiled scion, wastrel son with privileges he has done nothing to earn. No wonder they hate his guts.

The world is full of pain and suffering and Will isn't the only one to have lost someone. There are wars and there is crossing the street; it all ends someday. It would be unfair to think his loss more important than anybody else's just because his father's name is on the Genosha monument in DC, but it isn't less important either. Take away the limelight and the human interest stories to boost a struggling WEI and Will is just a guy who misses his father as much as anybody else. He may not be the only one. But he is one.

He hesitates for a moment, then plunges his hands into the flicker of shadow below the hand-dryer. It's so weak that the coordinate axis is almost out of reach and he wouldn't have dared take the leap to any other destination, but it's a sunny day in DC and the Washington monument casts a large shadow.

\--

Will traces the outline of the letters with his index fingers, the angles of W and A, the perfect roundness of the O, the bulging R.

“Father,” he says aloud, then, “Dad.”

The wings were for flying, not for warmth. There was no down to shed, but once in a while, his father would shake them out with a sigh or a groan and a couple of feathers might flutter to the ground. One feather is in a museum now, the only piece of his father that didn’t burn.

Years ago, Will got out of bed and padded to his parents’ bedroom in the middle of the night. He doesn’t recall why, just that he saw his father lying naked on his stomach and his mother running her hands through the feathers, untangling them Her face was relaxed and peaceful. Her hands burrowed deep into the white mass, knowing what to do with the intimacy of long habit. His father’s eyes were closed, a very faint smile on his lips.

Will can’t recall if he left before he broke the scene or if he wanted water enough to override it. He didn’t have the words for what he saw then, he isn’t sure he does now. Of course he knew they were a unit. He saw them working together, sleeping together and fighting the corporate wars side by side. But what he saw through the door crack that night is why they might have chosen to.

It was a rare event to catch either of his parents off guard. Somethimes he could see the shift as the stranger melted away and became his father or mother. He didn’t know their other faces. In later years, there would be a terrifying blankness for seconds before they were his again. Will wishes what he saw in the bedroom was their true faces; he knows there isn’t any such thing. He didn’t get the chance to befriend the strangers that lived behind his father’s eyes and his mother has retreated to some place where he can’t reach her anymore. She is as fierce as before, as loving and maybe even more demonstrative, but she won’t care about anything again in her lifetime. Will understands, he really does, it’s just that sometimes he wants to scream at her that he’s still alive, she’s still alive and why the fuck doesn’t she see him when she looks at him?

Yet, he is no different himself. He wears the mask of a living, breathing person over the face of a corpse and if that’s what she sees, no wonder she doesn’t want to keep looking. There is nothing here for him in DC. His father is gone in an giant fireball of exploding jet fuel. His mother runs WEI so Will can go to the Academy and learn how to die for the greater mutant good. Will stands by the Genosha monument between Bacon Drive and Constitution Avenue; he has no idea where to go next.

\--

To this day, the spectre of Sebastian Shaw seems to hover over the Hellfire Club of NYC. The London branch made efforts in the direction of what they thought was trendy retro, but the Hellfire Club between 14th and 9th, looks the same as ever: crystal chandeliers, burgundy velvet curtains and Persian rugs, with an equal disregard for expense and taste. Will produces his member card at the door and endures the retinal scan and DNA test, before the valet hands him the suit he keeps there and escorts him to a secluded room where he can change. The staff here calls him ‘Mr. Worthington’ and treats him as a guest among others.

Will was invited to the HFC on his sixteenth birthday in the grand old tradition of Worthingtons and Braddocks getting it on early. His mother lowered the newspaper and looked at him in a measuring way, then said she thought it was a good idea. Once she had recounted the initiation ceremony in general and her own in particular, Will was quite sure only a memory wipe could restore him as a sexual being.

The year after, he went with Emma Frost as his supervisor and rather enjoyed himself. During a few days of affable debauchery, he learnt to please and how to be pleased by men and women. He found out what his preferences were and what he needed to develop a liking for. Emma told him to think of it as training. Well, what she said was that if he ever needed to whore himself out, he might as well be good at it. His mother gave Emma a nasty look, but nodded.

Will changes into the black suit, then walks into the salon. A waiter appears with a tumbler glass on a tray and Will takes it, knowing it will be the Stolichnaya he favours. As everything else here, the service is quiet and impeccable, even if the tensions running below the surface are as strong as in any Monte Carlo casino. Business, like other things, is conducted in private rooms.

The vodka hits his system so fast he can almost see the salon waver in front of him. It settles comfortably into a place he knows and likes and the faces become friendly. To the left, the Dermail sisters, as shrewd as they are pretty. They are flanked by Stavroulakis, a Greek tycoon whom WEI have had the pleasure to do business, the Earl of Derby and the Bishop of Warwick, all regulars. To the right, Tessa reclines on a couch, attended by Shinobi and Cordelia. The others give them a wide berth, but Will is one of Tessa’s favourites among the younger generation, being male and, well, young. Smiling, he walks over, bends down and kisses her cheek.

“Darling Will,’ Tessa says in the vague way that has had many doubting her mental capacities just before she took them for all they had. “What can I do for you, my boy? You look tired.”

“I’m fine,” Will answers, surprised out of his glib answer by Tessa’s apparent concern.

“That’s not what I hear out of the Academy lately,” Tessa says, eyes narrowing. “Nevermind. I know you can’t talk about it. You can tell me what you think of my latest facelift and then go enjoy yourself with people your own age. The Dermails are dying to talk to you.”

“You didn’t need a facelift,” Will tells her, although he secretly thinks she hasn’t had such good work done the last times. Not like his mother who came out of an attempted assassination, slashed from temple to chin, looking better than ever.

Tessa’s face hardens momentarily, but then she laughs and thwaps him on the arm with her ostrich feather fan, forgiving his insincerity.

As promised, Elena and Marie-Therese are more than interested in talking to Will, trying to ferret out any information on WEI they can and feeling him up when they can’t. Halfway into the conversation, the three of them withdraw to a semi-private room with muted lightning and music. Will has spent enough time with Elena and Marie-Therese to find their company restful.They are four or five years his senior, working twice as hard as he and on occasion he could swear they read his mind, although they are confirmed flatscans. He doesn’t let down his guard around them, but he can enjoy himself.

\--

There is a time when semi-private needs to become private. Elena and Marie-Therese hauls Will upstairs, hauls him because he isn’t quite in the mood. Elena has taken speed earlier and her buzz is sharp and uncomfortable. It’s easier to lean into Marie-Therese’s good, mellow drunkenness, but Will is aware that it’s a school night and if he was really into this, he wouldn’t be thinking about that at all.

‘Come on,” Elena wheedles, holding the door for him, while Marie-Therese tries to steer him through it.

That’s when Will picks it up, like a scent. His mother’s presence. She’s here, but he hasn’t felt her all evening. He reaches out and it’s her, only so very weak. The Dermail sisters try to hold him back, which is when the Academy self-defense lessons come in handy. He takes off down the hallway to find his mother.

Will knows his way around the HFC well enough, but the first door he kicks open is the wrong one. Tessa is yelling in his head and he blocks her out, it’s his mother fading out of existence and hell if he’ll let that happen. The second door is the one. He pivots on one foot and the kick is perfectly placed. He rushes in, prepared to find her in any condition, even dead, but if she is, she can still be saved, he has to believe that.

What he finds are all his senses falling away from him in a headrush. Empathy and telepathy leaves him between one breath and another and the shadow of the canopy over the bed suddenly has no deeper meaning. In the bed, his mother pulls black silk sheet to her chest. The man beside her fights her for the coverlet. Both of them seem too stunned for speech.

“An anti-psi?” he asks, incredulously.

“Will,” his mother says, reaching out.

He shakes his head and backs out of the room. The door casts a shadow and though it’s weak and his powers are only slowly returning, he lets it take him and barely bothers to think of where.

\--

Where becomes the Statue of Liberty. Will has no idea how he crossed water, but he’s somewhat grateful he didn’t dump himself in the Atlantic. The darker the night, the weaker the shadows and getting out of the sea in the small hours could have proved tricky. The statue is, however, lit by strong floodlights, which is probably why he ended up there. The inscription reads:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door”

They taught him that at school. His mother tried to teach him not to behave like an ass and he’s doing his damndest not to. Okay, so he loves her, that’s a given and he doesn’t really blame her for being lonely. He would like her to find someone to make her smile again, someone who won’t use her for her money and influence and that's going to happen when Satan skates. He supposes he can understand why she would choose the HFC and their discrete services over the casual dinner date. She has needs. Okay, so he doesn’t want to think too much about that, she’s his mother.

It’s cold out here and the wind goes right through Will’s thin suit jacket. He left his coat at the club and he regrets it now, considering the hypothermia scare a few weeks ago. He walks up and down by the waterside just to keep moving, but the smell of sewage and rotting seaweed soon makes him retreat further inland; he picks up the pace jogging around the statue, lap after lap.

He doesn’t want to be a misogynist or unfair. In truth, it isn’t the sight of his mother in bed with a man that has him all freaked out, it’s the sight of her with an anti-psi. Oh, he knows the man must have been vetted by Tessa, the point is that his mother has always pretended to be fully integrated with her powers and now it turns out she hates them as much as he does.

Will doesn’t mind Raph, she can’t help what she is anymore than he can, but he is less in her presence. And if he should get used to it, he’d need to keep her near always, a dependence he’s been warned about by his mother. Who fucks anti-psis to relax. Hell.

Ruining a perfectly good suit, he sits down on the damp ground in it. The valet will have a new one for him the next time he goes to the HFC, so it doesn’t matter. He’s at the stage when you’re almost sober, but feels all the misery of being drunk. A ‘port seems like a bad idea presently, but he’s got to get out of here before the first ferry arrives. He carries neither cash, cards or ID and could well be arrested for loitering if any security guards discover him here.

It would be easier if he could think of her as a whore or a slut who has betrayed him and his father, only he can’t. She is his mother, whatever she does. That she has lied about a lot of things and kept other things from him, well, he’ll have to deal with it later, preferably when he isn’t fucking freezing in the shadow of a national monument.

He lets the shadows wash over him and reaches for the Academy dorms. Away from here, he thinks. He doesn’t think ‘home’ since that just stopped being a person.

\--

Will wakes up with a head cold around nine. There are twenty-three messages on his cell phone. During the day, his mother drops in six times during lunch and breaks. Will outjumps her, going to through several stops to Brussels, St Petersburg, Rio, Kyoto and Baltimore. The sixth time, he goes to Siberia and has a hell of a time getting out of there. When he gets back, classes are over, notes and voice messages have been left all over his room and he realizes he won’t be able to sleep in a room that charged with emotional residue.

Irritable and headachy, he jumps over to the West Coast and spends the night drinking in Santa Barbara, flashing his Academy badge whenever he is asked for ID. And elderly gentleman takes him home in the morning and they fool around some, have tea together and Will is back at the Academy by lunchtime. More messages, more notes and when Will opens up his mail account, it’s way over the limit. He calls in sick for the rest of the day, and shuts himself in the artificial darkness of his room, where there are no shadows.

After a few hours of sleep, he feels more human and when he listens to the messages, he is relieved. His mother is saying that she’s sorry he got a shock, but that he doesn’t have any right to dictate her actions. She hopes he gets over it soon and she does love him. He writes her an email for that, saying that she needs to give him some time to get over it and he will, but not to come up to the Academy for a while and he loves her too.

While on the computer, he browses the news and then tries to look through the assignments of the week. He feels oddly lethargic, though, and realises that he’s running a fever with his cold. This doesn’t surprise him, as the psyche and the body are linked strongly in telempaths. He takes some aspirin, drinks tap water and rests. As soon as his mother emails back to promise she won’t drop in unexpected, Will switches on the lamps and makes tea with lemon and honey to drink in bed.

The next time Will wakes up, he is sick. Aspirin does nothing for his fever and he stops trying when he can’t open the child-proof cap any longer. He can’t breathe when he lies down, he is too weak to sit up and every move hurts. When he closes his eyes, he’s in Denver, when awake he coughs until small blood vessels pop in his throat and eyes. It’s a no-win situation.

Eventually, the fever burns itself out and Will’s head clears enough that he can take a shower, change his sheets and put his cell phone on the charger. Doing those three things wipes him out, but he gets a good night’s sleep after that and the calendar tells him he has the whole weekend to recover before he has to go to classes again.

\--

On Monday, Will is back on schedule. He hasn’t really done his homework, but he has done something that looks like it, if you squint benevolently. He jogged around the campus on Sunday afternoon and then tested his powers thoroughly to make sure he didn’t blow out any circuits while sick. He’s tired, but he’s got his head together and the assignments of last week make more sense. He plans to spend the afternoon in the lab to figure some of it out. There is a simulation he’d like to run on emotional boundaries and self-propagation theory. The current solution is dynamic stability with numerous situation specific constraints. Will thinks he can cut down on the number of constraints if he can get the first ones phrased just right.

Naturally, this is when there is a fire-drill. They all have to go outside and wait for the fire squad to arrive. Some of the other students growl about all the different ways they could put out a fire and how stupid rules and regulations are. Will has brought a few papers with him and doesn’t really mind. It amazes him how people will get upset about small things and things they can’t do anything about, like the weather. Being a teleporter, Will is indifferent to weather; if he doesn’t like it, he’ll ‘port somewhere else, but anyone can go indoors.

It turns out the firemen are unhappy about several things in the psilabs, some of them architechtural in nature. Kazakova, who is Safety Officer, mostly due to being the new girl, confers furiously with their captain. Professor Browning, like the gun, not the poet, walks over to have his say as well. It’s no use and soon Wisdom informs them that A to K will go the gym for their monthly physical, while L to Z will report to sickbay for their monthly medical; there’ll be no labs this afternoon. Will, who is Braddock, starts to go with A to K, but Barrett stops him, explaining that since Will has been out sick for a week, he needs a clean bill of health before he’s allowed back into anything more strenous than lectures. He might as well go with the L to Z. Will sighs and does as he’s told.

As Will isn’t on anyone’s lists, he gets to be last in line, behind Weir. The papers can’t last forever and when Weir starts talking to him, he has to listen. Not that there’s anything wrong with David. He and Will frequently partner when they do their labwork, he’s decent in combat and will be a fine comm telepath someday, but he doesn’t understand. He and the others think the Academy is all fun and games, with an occasional headache to break up the fun. It isn’t. What they do in the labs is real work, could save someone’s sanity, could as easily break it. Same thing with the sims and the fieldwork and the sparring. What Will learns now is all he’ll ever learn before he’s thrown into a situation where other lives depend on his skills and flexibility. This isn’t about having fun, this is about internalizing the routines you need and know which ones you’d better skip before they kill you dead. David doesn’t have any concept of how imminent death is, either. These are the things in the back of Will’s mind as he talks to David about the Rangers, the Flyers and the Devils.

David has various allergies and always takes a long time in the monthly medical. Will should have taken the offer to jump ahead; when David comes out, adjusting his shirt, it’s almost six in the evening. Will follows the doctor into the examination room, removes his coat and his sweater and rolls up his sleeve. Blood pressure, pulse rate, one ten ml vial of blood that goes directly in the bloodwork analysis machine, he knows the drill. The doctor asks questions designed to cover all types of telempath problems and takes notes. For some obscure reason, he shines a light into Will’s eyes, ears and throat. He listens to Will’s heart and lungs.

“Mr. Braddock, you had a cold last week,” he states.

Will is pretty sure the doctor read this fact off his attendance record. He nods.

“Deep breath, please. Again.”

The stethoscope moves. The doctor scribbles on his notepad. More deep breaths. This is taking forever. The doctor finally puts down the stethoscope. Will can sense wariness off him and some other tightly controlled emotion. Annoyance, perhaps.

“Mr. Braddock, I would like to do a chest X-ray on you. Would you excuse me for a moment, while I call Radiology?”

He leaves the room without waiting for an answer. Will puts his sweater back on and stays put. There isn’t much else to do. You do what the doctor tells you to or they ground you, which is one reason Will avoids sickbay as much as possible. Still, the point is worth arguing and when the doctor returns, Will is ready.

“It was just a cold,” he says, “and it’s all better now”

“I’m sure it is, Mr. Braddock, but I don’t like the sound of your breathing.”

“My breathing always sounds funny,” Will protests and it’s true.

He has inherited his father’s lung capacity. In thin air or thick smoke, Will can stay conscious longer than anybody else, because of his superior oxygen uptake. But unless he needs the reserve, the extra tissue is folded onto itself, in practice collapsing a part of each lung. With a stethoscope amping up the breath sounds, it does sound funny.

The doctor takes off his glasses. He hasn’t bothered to introduce himself. Will notes the nametag says Brink.

“I know,” he agrees, “which is why I’ve asked your personal physician to ‘port in. She should be here in a few minutes. Let’s go get that X-ray, Mr. Braddock, if you please.”

It dawns on Will that this is serious. If Dr. Brink wants the X-ray enough to keep Radiology open after six and has gotten hold of a teleporter with no advance booking at all, it’s got to be. He lets himself be led downstairs, takes off his shirt and stands between two plates, obediently inhaling and exhaling per instruction.

Dr. King is waiting upstairs as he returns.

“Will, dear,” she says in a manner that reminds Will of Tessa. “What seems to be the problem?”

Will kisses her cheek. Dr. King is in her sixties, a stout woman with sharp blue eyes and a surprisingly melodious voice. She has given Will all of his vaccinations and guarded his health for as long as he can remember. She is also co-author of the famous list of psi sanctioned substances; she knows telepathy as well as any baseline human can.

“I’m fine,” he says. “A cold last week, that’s all.”

He doesn’t like the look she exchanges with Dr. Brink. Someone has briefed her and not him.

“Bad cough?” she asks, whipping out her own stethoscope. “Congestion, trouble breathing?”

Will sighs. There is nothing to do but to strip to the waist again, he realizes that, but it’s seven pm and he hasn’t had dinner and only a sandwich for lunch.

“I’m fine now,” he insists.

It isn’t a denial and Dr. King doesn’t miss that. She warms the stethoscope between her hands before applying it to Will’s back. Once more, he breathes deeply when she tells him to, reserve lung tissue inflating with a crackle. A cough deflates it again, just as it should. But when Dr. King moves to face him, she doesn’t look happy.

“Your cold has cleared up nicely,” she says. “That’s not what I’m worried about. The trouble is that your left lung isn’t working right. It may be nothing. It may be very serious indeed. Will, I want you to come in tomorrow and we’ll do some more scans and examine you in the presence of a specialist.”

Will has never felt more exposed than he does at this moment, sitting half-naked on a hospital cot. The sympathy in Dr. King’s voice is almost more than he can bear. Very bad, then.

“What kind of specialist?” he croaks.

The tension level goes up another set of points. Dr. Brink is now so uncomfortable that he has moved over to the doorway and seems ready to bolt.

“Oncologist,” Dr. King says. “I’m very sorry, Will.”

He waits for her to turn into the green-eyed monster, to say:’Little empath’, because surely this is a dream and he’ll wake up soon. But she doesn’t, only continues in her brisk, professional tones.

“Your immune system isn’t all it could be. We may need to move fast on this. Which means we have to get your mother’s signature on all papers…”

“No,” Will interrupts.

Dr. King looks at him askance. He can see the thoughts running through her mind, that he’s refusing treatment, what a tricky business the surgery is going to be and the deep, instinctual conviction that has crystallized into a diagnosis, specialist or not. She’s planning ahead.

“I mean,” he amends,” it won’t be necessary. I’m legally an adult. Tell me what I have to do.”

She relaxes fractionally.

“Today? Have dinner and go back to bed. I know it has been a shock to you and we don’t need a psionic fever to complicate matters. Be back here at eight tomorrow. Dr. Brink has cleared your schedule for the rest of the week.”

Will wants to protest. He has midterms and he’s behind on his assignments as it is. He nods instead and starts dressing. To the extent he’s thought about dying, he always assumed it would be a bullet or an explosion that took him out. Of all his dead, none have had time to succumb to age or disease. Well, someone has to be the first.

He wants, he doesn’t know exactly what he wants. But he wants it very much. He’d like to be a boy again, too young to be told the truth. He’d like to ride the elephant in the backyard, the one who is Indian instead of African because Indian elephants were all his uncle had ever seen at the London Zoo.

And that touches on the forbidden wish, on Gambia and the treasure there, forever hidden. His father leaning on the fence, smiling widely. His mother on the porch, reading in the shade. He could go back, but he knows he doesn’t have it in him to give up paradise a second time.

Dr. King writes down the appointment, as if he couldn’t be trusted to remember it by himself. Will sticks it in his pocket. He makes no promises to be there. Being legally adult, means, among other things, that no one can make him do shit. The decisions, all of them, are his.

\--

There's only so much self-destructive behaviour Will can engage in before starting to feel embarassed about it and he's filled up his quote of drinking and fucking this week already. It would be sensible to start working on the assignments, perhaps he can get some credit for it and not have to re-sit all the exams later, but his thoughts are scattered, his mind everywhere. He looks up several types of lung cancers in Merck's medical manual on the net instead. The long-term survival rates does nothing to reassure him. He takes out the flute, but the knowledge of what the shortness of breath might mean disturbs him, although he knows it's lack of practice, nothing else. Might as well go for a walk or a bounce.

He takes a minute to put his shields together. Someone called him"Teflon" because everything seems to bounce straight off his mental armour. True or not, he doesn't want to go broadcasting all over campus. That will alert the X-Family and maybe cause his mother to break her word. He wants to get away.

It's night in Europe already and Africa isn't an option. Will knows another place, along the Jersey shore. The boardwalk is deserted, this time of the year, the parasols tightly rolled up, but his parents used to take him there when he was a boy. His father taught him how to fly a kite in the capricious winds on the beach. He'd put his fishing pole in its stand and play with Will in the sand, building castles and gathering shells or pretty stones.

His mother would stand guard on the boardwalk, scanning the beach for assassins, until Will wanted to go in the water. Then she'd shimmy out of her armour with amazing speed and wade in with him, laughing as the waves threw them both off-balance. It was his father's turn to watch then and he did, anxiety clear on his face. He didn't like when they went into the water. With the wings, he was helpless, if they got into trouble and the undertows are unpredictable. He'd relax as they struggled shorewards again, he'd meet them halfway with the towels and rub them both dry.

The sand is still warm from the afternoon sun and night breeze is just starting to pick up. The beach goes on for miles and miles to the south. Spray blows up around the rock piers, large dark boulders receding out of sight as the tide comes in. Will walks safely above the tideline, shoes and socks in hand. There's no one else in sight.

Will doesn't think his father ever caught a fish. He liked carrying the fishing poles around and to talk to the other fishermen as if he was one of them, that was all. Will isn't sure his father would have known how to kill the fish, but his mother is very good at that sort of thing. Putting people out of their misery. He's still not sure why he's so angry with her. To be fair, it isn't all anger, it's relief, too. As if he's been waiting for her to screw up so he can distance himself. He's had to wait a long time for that to happen.

He was wrong about the Worthington name being a burden. It's the fact that he's a Braddock that's fucking him up. Dr. King told him to use the time well and not be angry, but she's wrong. If time is limited, he wants to use it to feel what he feels, not what he ought to feel. He can't even go to Gambia for this, because Uncle Jamie will side with his mother, like everyone else.

There's probably a perfectly valid explanation. He doesn't want to hear it. Same as with the cells growing out of control inside his chest; he doesn't care what has gone wrong, he wants it cut out and away from him. Standing on the beach of his childhood summers, he knows that isn't likely to happen.

He looks into the future, but there are no happy endings, not even clean one. They'll live happily ever after only until the next thing comes up and demands lives and sacrifices. That's the way the story goes: on and on.

THE END


End file.
